


Count to Ten

by Ironlawyer



Category: Marvel Ultimates
Genre: Angst, Cheating, M/M, Secret Relationship, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-25 23:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17130803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer
Summary: Tony gets what he wants, but not what hewants





	Count to Ten

**Author's Note:**

  * For [msermesth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msermesth/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy this, msermesth.

**1 – Want**

Tony knows lust. Captain America in the flesh, half drowned and crazy and fighting his way through the facility and Tony’s first thought is: _damn I want a piece of that._ Tony is used to getting what he wants. All business for a time, he loses track of the thought, no time for lust, just Hulks and aliens. Iron Man is some new form of life that’s keeping him alive. Catching moments of it when he sees Cap every time, because _damn_. For now though, he drinks, parties, and fucks a couple blond supermodels to keep the hunger at bay.

**2 – Sinking**

_Are you okay, Tony?_ A hand reached out like the suit is human. _Just a little dizzy, Captain_ , and he feels like a sinking ship, because it really means, _Just falling a little in love with you, Captain._ Every day sinking deeper and harder. He wakes thinking about him, falls asleep in the arms of a stranger still thinking about him. Too much want, too soon and too hard and too out of reach. Tony is used to getting what he wants. He smiles more, touches Steve more, spends a hefty fortune on memorabilia. _I can make you love me_.

**3 – Swimming**

Like catching fishes, it takes patience. Tony knows when to nudge things along and when to let it lie. Steve smiles at him more, laughs with him more. _Buddy_ , Steve calls him, but Tony knows it’ll change. _Move in to the mansion, Steve,_ just a little more nudging, _I could use the company._ From there catching fishes becomes shooting them in a barrel. Sit a little closer, step out of the shower when Steve walks down the hall. They’ll be fucking by Friday. Nudge, nudge, nudge. That 20s sensibility holds a little too steady. They don’t start fucking till Sunday.

**4 – Love**

Steve is a generous lover. He gives Tony what he needs. Fucks him hard into the mattress until the bed springs break. They laugh like school kids. Leave the bedroom, straighten their clothes and back to formality. _Buddy_ , Steve calls him in public and Tony feels the bruises from the night before and smirks. In private, Steve has no better word than, _beg_. That Steve is wild, none of the restraint he ties himself to in the day. Tony enjoys the duality of it, the life within a life. He feels like that Steve belongs to him and him alone. 

**5 – Something Like Love**

He tires of fuck you and leave you. Days spent like they hardly know each other. No sneaking kisses when they have a moment alone. No kisses at all, in fact. He starts to feel like there’s something tickling under his skin when they sit close in a meeting. He was never a hold-hands kind of person. And yet. _I want him to want me as much as I want him._ Tony is used to getting what he wants. He brews in that want. Drip, drip, of resentment building. He starts to hate Steve as much as he loves him.

**6 – What Are We**

They fuck before bed. Sleep together but not _together_. It’s what Tony wanted once. He wonders what Steve sees in him. Sex, just sex. He shouldn’t care. Wants to make himself not care, starts his mornings with whiskey again to numb himself to it. Steve rolls out of bed at sunrise without a word, pulls on socks and pants and shirt and says _see you tonight, Tony_ with a smile on his face. Tony thinks, _fuck you_. Tony says, _see you tonight, Steve_. Tony wants to burn it all to the ground. Tony is used to getting what he wants. 

**7 – Comfort**

He doesn’t need Steve to feel good. He lived a good life without him. Night clubs now. Dancing, drinking, music to burn the thoughts right out of his brain. Swaying to the rhythm of _feel better, feel better, feel better._ Giddy on the energy, the attention of the bright eyed young blond who grinds against him on the dancefloor. Sloppy kisses and roving hands; no shame here. Hotel room paid on his credit card, they drain the mini bar dry and this time he gets to fuck someone into the mattress. Run fingers through his hair. Kiss. Pretend. Feel better.

**8 – Mourning Time**

His brain is killing him. If he wasn’t so sober, he would laugh. He might be about to puke on his custom leather loafers. Steve’s footsteps are coming close. There is stale whiskey on Tony pant leg and a lose thread where cigarette ash landed in his lap. Specks of a strangers come on his blazer. No one expected any better from him, once. _You smell like you slept in an alley._ Tony steels himself with hair of the dog and says the words: _I cheated on you._ Thinks the words: _hate me. Hate me, like I matter to you._

**9 – Living**

Steve is calmer than he should be. Brewing on words when he should be fighting, punching, shouting. _Feel something,_ Tony wants to say. Steve speaks when Tony doesn’t: _You’re a waste of space. Go drink yourself into the gutter and I hope that tumor kills you._ Flat words. Hurt pride, not heartbreak. Steve walks away. Tony wishes he had hit him and wants to find someone who will. Instead he steps outside the him he has become and revisits a Tony he used to be. He shouldn’t be sober at seven am, drinking in the gutter feels less like dying. 

**10 – Being Alive**

It’s only now there is no _them_ that anyone notices there once was. _What happened between you two?_ Steve is distant and Tony is unmoored once more. Drifting along in a sea of _want_ and _can’t have_ , because he destroys all the good in his life. Drink and fuck and get high like the old days and never stop to contemplate what love felt like. No one calls on Iron Man anymore but he flies the suit like he still means something. Tony wants to feel alive. Tony wants to feel dead. Tony is used to getting what he wants.


End file.
